A Detroit News poll last week showed a slight majority of likely Michigan voters (52.1 percent) still opposes legalizing the possession of marijuana for personal consumption. If true, then Michigan is lagging the nation. A Pew Research Center survey last month revealed support for banning pot nationwide had fallen to 42 percent, down sharply from 52 percent just four years earlier and 60 percent in 2008.

The Detroit News poll may have an accuracy problem. A Michigan ballot initiative proposing to legalize marijuana for medical users in 2008 won with 63 percent and 3 million “yes” votes. Successful measures such as this in other states, and voter-approved legalization in Colorado and Washington, are part of a strong national trend in favor of pot legalization shown by the Pew polling. It seems unlikely the opinion of Michigan voters has regressed so far back toward banning the weed.

But if it has, then the Detroit News poll also shows why. Of those who self-identified as “strong Republican” voters, an astounding 70.6 percent oppose legalization. No other political subset is remotely close: Opposition among those who “lean Republican” was only 53.2 percent, barely more than the average of all voters.

The so-called “religious right” is a likely driver of this opposition. Last year, the Public Religion Research Institute polled Christians regarding their attitude toward marijuana laws and “white evangelical protestants” - generally speaking the bulk of the Christian conservative population - were substantially more inclined to unleash the power and purse of government to prevent people from smoking pot. Just 29 percent of them favor legalization, versus 40 percent for Catholics and 49 percent for mainline Protestants.

Retired Baltimore police Major Neill Franklin is an active board member at his Protestant church. He’s also a former undercover narcotics officer and now the executive director of Law Enforcement Against Prohibition, a coalition of former cops and other soldiers in the War on Drugs who want to put an end to it.

“Jesus Christ was about two things: Number one was forgiveness, and number two was compassion,” said Franklin when asked recently about his faith and drug laws. “So if you’re a Christian and you think that these policies are something that your Lord and Savior would embrace, you’ve got another thing coming.”

When drug users harm others, cops must put them in cages. But for those “Hell bent,” so to speak, on harming only themselves, the Biblical command to Christians is to put them in pews, not prisons. The Salvation Army cares for its share of alcoholics, a Christian mission that would be more challenging if the mere exercise of a drinking habit were grounds to repeatedly bring down the wrath of the police upon the souls in need of saving. Because marijuana is overwhelmingly less personally destructive than alcohol, to say nothing of less violence-inducing, the case for supporting pot legalization on the grounds of Christian compassion should be ever the stronger.

Ideologically, the waste from the War on Pot should should cause spasms of vomit from a conservative claiming concern about the size of government debt. During 2012, the FBI says America’s police officers were arresting 59 violent criminals per hour for murders, rapes, and assaults. They surely could have caught more, but they spent that same hour diverting their attention to catch 75 people solely for the offense of marijuana possession.

To be a “Christian conservative” is to have both an ideology and theology that should oppose a senseless drug policy.

Ken Braun was a legislative aide for a Republican lawmaker in the Michigan House and worked for the Mackinac Center for Public Policy. He has assisted in a start-up effort to encourage employers to provide economic education to employees, and is currently the director of policy for InformationStation.org. His employer is not responsible for what he says here, on Facebook, or Twitter ... or in Spartan Stadium on game days.